


fight the tide (until the day we die)

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [241]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Foreshadowing, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sticks and Frog in Mithrim, Trauma Children, Visiting the Sickbed, title from the song Ghosts by BANNERS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24366490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: The crying-feeling in Sticks’ throat has not gone away. She did not think it would, exactly; ever since the river, and Russandol going down into the water with the wildcat man on his back, she has not slept well or felt much like eating. Crying is part of that.Same as it was, in the bad old world.
Relationships: Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Huan, Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fingon | Findekáno & Maedhros | Maitimo, Maedhros | Maitimo & Original Female Character(s), Original Female Character(s) & Amlach
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [241]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	fight the tide (until the day we die)

The crying-feeling in Sticks’ throat has not gone away. She did not think it would, exactly; ever since the river, and Russandol going down into the water with the wildcat man on his back, she has not slept well or felt much like eating. Crying is part of that.

Same as it was, in the bad old world.

She likes Beren, but he makes her eyes swim. She is sorry to Soldier, but she can’t tell him. Belle is all-over grey and tired, trying to lift Russandol out of the dark.

But Russandol has returned, which even Belle didn’t believe would happen. Shouldn’t the crying leave, then?

Sticks refuses to ask anyone. Certainly not this tall cold girl with the sharp grey eyes, the long, pale-goldy hair. “I’m to mind you,” says the girl. She isn’t grown, for all that tall. Sticks would know if she was grown.

“Don’t touch Frog,” Sticks says, baring her teeth. She’ll bite if she has to, but Belle—Estrela, now, Estrela is the new name Belle has given herself—told them to be good.

_Please. Please._

That is a kind of crying, too.

“Frog?” says the girl. Scornful, she is. Scornful as sin. _Ornery bitch_ , Sticks thinks, but she doesn’t say it. You don’t speak so to other women, as they can do nothing about it.

That’s Belle—Estrela—again.

Sticks says, instead, “It’s his _name_.”

“Mm,” says Frog. Frog has lost one of the moccasins that Beren gave him, and is poking at a corner of the stone wall with his toes. He has not been crying but has been curling in on himself like a prodded grub.

He likely doesn’t understand, that the man in the woods would have killed them.

Russandol knew. All the way over the red forest-floor, even when he was crawling, he was trying to tell them goodbye.

If she could rush into the place where they are keeping him, and find him sitting up with his thin face all tired and beaten-down by the trouble of living, she could give him a piece of her mind.

_What are you on about, Russandol? Scaring us to death._

It wouldn’t be fair, but it would make her feel right again.

He would smile one of his little smiles, which Frog gets more of on account of being almost a baby. Russandol has a nice mouth. Or had, before they split it all up. He would say,

 _I’m dreadfully sorry, Sticks. Shan’t do it again._ All his words would be clear and pretty at the edges, because that was the way he talked.

“Is he hungry?”

The tall girl is talking.

“He ain’t hungry yet,” Sticks answers, not trying to look friendly. They have to get away. She knows she won’t find him awake in the far room—he is still in that dark sleep—but now, more than ever, she feels she must see him.

Maybe Frog will know if Russandol is just hiding. Just keeping to himself. Frog understands that sort of thing.

The crying tastes bitter. Tastes like pain. She gets a different pain, an ache in her head when she tries to remember the small house and Ma.

When they took her, did they go back to Ma? Likely, likely, they went and stuck a hatchet in Ma’s head. Russandol’s missing hand is just _gone_. What would Ma look like without a piece of her face?

(What does Ma look like?)

Sticks wants to retch out the stew Beren gave to them. She wants to be gone—from the heavy stone walls, the floor with the dried rushes thrown down upon it.

Frog is whining. Sticks picks him up, and walks away from the tall girl.

“You can’t leave!” says the tall girl. See? She ain’t a woman. She calls commands like a young ‘un.

“Tell Finrod!” Sticks snaps, over her shoulder. Finrod is somewhere here, and he is the tall girl’s brother.

What is it like, to have a brother? She is thinking of Amras, now. Russandol has more brothers than just Amras, though. They seem to be everywhere, and they have frightening eyes. You can’t trust men who look on you with wanting eyes: doesn’t matter what they want.

The tall girl huffs off and Sticks sets Frog down.

“Find your shoe.”

He shakes his head.

“Beren made ‘em specially for you!”

He crouches low. Traces his toes with his fingers. “Cold,” he murmurs.

Sticks tugs him flat against the wall as a few strangers shoulder by, carrying horse blankets, barrels, satchels. Then she says, tired-like,

“‘Course you’re cold! That’s what the shoes is for.”

“Cold,” Frog says again.

No one is whipped, here. It isn’t a whipping place. They’re cooking, too. Good smells, pots big enough for a hundred men to eat. Sticks has a sharp nose.

But they took his hand. Before Russandol could come to this place and love it better, perhaps, than Sticks ever will, they took his hand.

She felt how that hand used to be, once, because he held hers. In that long night, there is a secret spot, too, that even Russandol wouldn’t be able to speak of, when he wakes.

 _She_ woke just after he had gone off sleeping. She slipped her paws down over his right hand and rubbed, slow and gentle like Belle does, trying to warm his fingers.

They were such good fingers. The bones there were strong.

The ‘seers, the master—well, they had done what they could to break every bone in Russandol. Not just the bones a person could see. The bones in his thoughts. Sticks doesn’t have better words for it. She only knows that Russandol is a wonderful thing. He could be as cold as anyone else, could shiver and sigh like anyone else, but keep on anyway.

She had thought, even then, _I don’t want them to know that he crawled. Not Belle. Not Soldier. I won’t let Frog say a word, not for all our days._

And then the river—

The doors of every room are shut, but Sticks has Frog. Frog creeps and listens and sniffs, and though it takes them a little time, they _do_ find Russandol.

Much good, the tall girl! She has not even given chase.

Sticks tries the handle of the right door herself. It is not locked. When the door swings open, the bed is straight before them. It is a broad bed. Not made of straw. Sticks is unused to such things.

Russandol looks nearly the same as he did when they slipped under the edge of the tent. Both Sticks and Frog screamed _then_. Now, Sticks shuts her mouth over the crying, and Frog keeps to his quiet mood.

What must she be, to offer help? What must she have? She settles on gumption; she must have gumption. _Gumption_ is to give someone sauce but for a good reason.

She needs every bit of it, for the room does not only house Russandol.

“Ho there!” says the great bad giant at the door—a brother. He is the one with the dog and the ugly twist to his lips. Were it not for that ugliness, his face would be something like Russandol’s.

They are all close in features and eyes, the brothers. It makes Sticks itch.

“Beg pardon,” Fingon says, for he is there too. Fingon is a doctor. He made Estrela well. Now he sits on one side of the bed, his hands clasped on his knees. “You—should not be here.”

Then Frog sees that the long wild hound that belongs to the brother is lying on the floor. Frog freezes.

Sticks would rather see the hound than learn what the remaining silence looks like, bound to Russandol’s body.

“Just a dog,” she coaxes, leading Frog a little farther into the room by his scrawny elbow. “Just an old dog—look at him, grey as a rag.”

The tall one splutters. Not a giant, after all. Not as tall as Russandol. It’s the height of his hate that made Sticks see him like that. “He’s not _old_ , you little wastrel.”

Fingon clears his throat. A cough, maybe.

Frog whimpers at both sounds, the words and the cough, and looks no less askance at the dog.

The dog regards them all quite calmly. His head is turned on its side.

“If he ain’t old, then he still ain’t fierce,” Sticks says stubbornly. “Lying there! Go on, Frog. Go to Russandol.”

“Really—” says Fingon, hesitant. “I do not think that would be—”

Russandol is so pale. The blankets on him look to be so heavy.

_Are you warm now? Russandol—Russandol!_

“Go on, Frog,” says Sticks, as terrible as she can muster.

“Huan is plenty fierce,” scolds Huan’s master. “The size of his jaws? He’d take your head off, quick as a damn blink.”

Frog took two steps, but now he stops. He doesn’t want to go past the dog and its jaws. Sticks loses patience.

“You’re an ornery bitch,” she says, to the ugly twist in the familiar face. “And I’ll kick your dog round _his_ head, if he blinks.”

The crying is gone from her throat. In its place is a little fear—for though there are no whips here, no immediate cruelty, there are many kinds of danger in the world—and a little promise of further gumption.

No one speaks. No one lunges at her. Sticks takes Frog by the hand rather than the elbow, and walks him towards the bed. They go to the left side. The arm is whole, there.

Sticks says, _I love you_ , but not aloud.

“ _Cano_ ,” sighs Frog, his fingers darting out to pat the pillow under Russandol’s head.

This time, it is Fingon who jumps.

“What did you—”

Sticks wants to hush him, but she has already been quite daring. “It’s just a game,” she says. “A baby game.” She looks at Fingon’s face, then, and she is reminded of Belle (Estrela), because of how much pain he is holding inside his mouth, his eyes.

He has two eyes, of course.

“ _Cano, cano_.” Frog draws his hand back. Then he turns to Sticks, his eyes wide. She knows what he is asking, without him having to say another word.

“He got bit,” she explains, wishing she didn’t have to say it before friendly Doctor Fingon and the cruel dog-boy. Wishing the words weren’t scraping her throat. “Don’t you worry, Frog. It won’t happen to you. Remember when you fell into the pit and he lifted you out? He stayed there for you. And when they beat him, they ain’t touch you.”

She can’t speak of what came later. Murphy and the knife. Russandol, tearing a man apart, is not the Russandol Frog wants.

She stares at the floor, then at the bruised fingers that do not move at all. Frog sinks down on his knees and props his chin on the edge of the bed.

“He’ll be glad to see us,” she says chokily, as quietly as she can. She isn’t ashamed. It isn’t _that_. “He’ll be so glad.”

The big dog picks itself up, and trots close to them. Frog curls away.

“Huan!” The boy leaning against the wall gives him a name.

Sticks stays between Frog and Huan, but she knows deep down in the pit of her belly, down where the darkness has to stay, for now, that Huan will not hurt them. She licks her lips, waiting for the change.

The change comes when Huan’s master pushes himself off the wall and trudges, boot-heavy, to stand at his dog’s shaggy shoulder.

“He won’t hurt you, Frog,” says the giant gruffly. “He wouldn’t hurt a fucking fly, unless I tell him to. Huan, don’t eat the little _cano_ brats.”

Huan huffs a breath. Sticks does not care about dogs, not even this one. She follows the line from the giant’s face to where the line ends—

Russandol.

 _Oh, no_ , she doesn’t say. _You love him, too._

That must be what _brothers_ is.

“Come along, Frog.” Sticks shakes his little shoulder. “Huan won’t hurt you.” She has seen enough, and Frog has not worked his magic; has not done what he used to do for Estrela, when she went blank inside.

(It is hard for Estrela to live sometimes. Sticks knows this.)

(Estrela was the one who told her that Russandol could not hide.)

They are in the hall again before she understands that the boy was trying to be kind. Fingon was easier; Fingon was sorry.

“Hungry,” Frog says softly. “Lots.” And he rubs his belly with the hand Sticks isn’t holding.

“We’ll get you something,” she promises. The hall is very long, when one is unused to being indoors. Sticks passes doors she doesn’t remember counting. A woman with a sharp nose and cheeks comes out of one door, buttoning her dress.

Sticks narrows her eyes. She has seen _that_ before. It doesn’t mean nothing as is good or right.

The dog—she should like the dog better, maybe. He could be useful. Safe.

“Sticks! Frog!”

It is Estrela’s dear, broken voice.

“What are you doing here?” Estrela is weighed down with a steaming pail of water. “I left you with Galadriel.”

“Oh, her—” Sticks remembers. “We didn’t like _her_.”

“Russandol,” Frog whispers. He stoops to pluck hem of Estrela’s trousers.

Sticks cannot deny it, now. She tips her chin up to look Estrela full in the face, and says, “We did. We went and saw him. We _had_ to.”

Estrela only sighs. Her face and hands are clean. Wachiwi—which is the name of the nice woman with the braids—gave her a fresh shirt and a pair of trousers that weren’t stained. She has her old shoes on her feet, though. Shoes are hard to come by.

“Frog lost a shoe. Beren’s shoe,” Sticks adds, before Estrela can say anything about Russandol.

What she wishes she could tell Estrela is, _He is going to come back to us. We have him here with us. Tell me it is good._

_Tell me._

_Please, please._

“I don’t want to leave you here,” Estrela says, since nothing can be done about the shoe. “But I must bring this water to Fingon. He is going to wash Russandol’s hair.”

Sticks has nothing to say to this. She has caused trouble; she knows this. She does not know what she would have changed.

Estrela must see something on her face. Pain, maybe. She pats Sticks on the shoulder, and says, “Will you wait here? I will come back in a moment. And then we will find you supper.”

Sticks obeys, this time.


End file.
